How do I describe Tim Key? To a certain subset of UK comedy nerds, he’s a man who needs no introduction. To those who need one, I could say he’s a poet, known for his wry, observational free verse. Or an actor, who’s popped up winningly in some of the best British comedies in recent memory (Peep Show; Inside No 9; the Alan Partridgeverse), and the odd blockbuster (Mickey 17). Or maybe a writer – having co-written (and starred in) the new feature film The Ballad of Wallis Island. “I quite like the fact there’s a lot of things,” Key muses. “When you think back to when you’re 16 years old, they all look like things you aren’t supposed to do as a job.”
The 48-year-old poet-cum-actor-cum-screenwriter – what Americans might call a “multi-hyphenate” – is lounging on a sofa in a private room of a central London hotel. He’s wearing a vivid pink sweater and a baseball cap with the letters “LA” stitched on. Key has, in fact, spent a reasonable amount of time in Los Angeles over the past couple of years, having flown out to star in The Paper, the newsroom-set remake of the US sitcom The Office; the experience is documented in a new book of poems, LA BABY!. “I really like America,” he says, “but it’s not plain sailing. I miss stuff about England – fish and chips, genuinely. A local pub. Rain. Lime bikes. Football.”
